USA TODAY: After brutal beating, B.J. Penn should hang up gloves

In the fight game, as UFC President Dana White likes to say, one night you show up and suddenly find out you’re old. For former UFC lightweight and welterweight champion B.J. Penn, that night was Saturday.

Just shy of his 34th birthday, Penn (16-9-2 MMA, 12-8-2 UFC) emerged from an extended hiatus at the UFC on FOX 5 event in Seattle to take a vicious beating at the hands of 23-year-old welterweight Rory MacDonald (14-1 MMA, 5-1 UFC), who showed his elder neither mercy nor respect over the course of a brutal three-round fight.

Penn’s spirit was as willing as ever. It was his flesh that seemed like it would have been better off staying home.

Nobody who cares about the man should. The fact that he lasted through all three rounds is proof that, for former greats like Penn, the will is the last thing to go. As MacDonald dug in with one body blow after another in the second round, sheer toughness was the only thing keeping Penn upright. It’s also the thing that could get him into trouble if he doesn’t know when to walk away and stay gone.

The unanimous decision loss was the second in a row for Penn. The last time it happened, at the hands of former Strikeforce welterweight champ Nick Diaz – who also battered him senseless in a fight that was anything but competitive – Penn took to the microphone after the bout to announce that he was leaning toward retirement.

“I don’t want to go home looking like this,” Penn said then, in October 2011. “I’m done.”

Then he took some time to think about it and decided that maybe he wasn’t quite so done after all. That’s how it often goes with the great ones. Once the bruises are just a memory, it’s like they never existed. The next fight will be different, they tell themselves. Most of the time, it only gets worse. So it was for Penn, who began Saturday night with the same old fiery intensity, and then ended it in a Seattle hospital.

Will he call it quits again now, this time for good? He’s given no indication one way or the other yet, but let’s hope. He doesn’t need the money or the glory anymore. His place in mixed martial arts lore is as secure as his eventual spot in the UFC Hall of Fame. He was one of the greatest lightweights of all time, but that’s over. Sometimes a fighter needs a good beating or two to tell him when it’s time to stop. Let’s hope Penn doesn’t need any more after this.

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